"I am the First Master and called the remedy. Because it is a remedy to so much, I say that in understanding this remedy, you cannot hurt me and that I can strike and hurt you. And for this, I cannot do better. I will send your dagger to the ground by turning my hand to the left side."

So speaks the First Remedy Master in Fiore dei Liberi's dagger section, folio 10v. Listen to the confidence. Because it is a remedy to so much. Fiore is telling you that this one master, if you understand him properly, solves a large portion of the problems any dagger fight will throw at you. Master the First Master and you have learned most of what Fiore's dagger teaches.

This post is a deep dive into what the First Master actually does. The mechanics of the hooking block, the rotation into control, the ligadura mezana that follows, and the reason so many of Fiore's nine dagger masters echo the same principle the First Master establishes.

The Situation He Answers

The First Master faces a specific attack: a descending strike with the dagger, coming down from above onto the inside of his body. This is the commonest dagger attack in both medieval and modern life. A hand raised overhead, a rondel dagger gripped with the point down, a strike driving toward the neck, chest, or face.

Against this, the First Master has an answer so elegant that modern interpreters working with sharp daggers still find themselves using it exactly as Fiore drew it.

The Hooking Block

The core of the First Master's remedy is what modern practitioners call the hooking block. Here is how it works, drawn directly from Fiore's text and the scholarship of Fight Like Fiore.

As the attack descends, you drive your own forearm upward to meet it. The line of your forearm should sit at roughly 45 degrees to the floor. You are not trying to meet the full force of the blow with bone-on-bone impact; you are aiming for your own wrist to contact the wrist of the attacker at the apex of their strike.

Three things make this work.

The 45-degree angle. If your forearm is horizontal (90 degrees from the attacking blade), the incoming force lands perpendicular to your arm and can drive it aside. If your forearm is vertical (0 degrees from the blade), you have no covering structure. The 45-degree angle catches the blow at an intermediate position where the force glances off rather than impacts flat.

The open hand. You lead with the palm open, fingers together, thumb tucked close. Open fingers catch on things and are easily damaged. The palm faces you. The shape of the hand at the base of the thumb makes a natural hook for the opponent's wrist to slot into.

The wrist-to-wrist contact. Your goal is not to punch the opponent's arm aside. It is to catch their wrist with yours at the moment their strike is fully extended. At full extension, they are at their weakest structurally; your forearm lever is at its strongest.

The moment contact is made, you roll your hand over and close it around their wrist, completing the grab. What started as a defensive block has become a positive hold on their weapon arm in a single fluid motion.

The Rotation Into Control

Once you have the grab, the play is not over. Fiore tells you to keep rotating:

"You can build on the momentum begun by rotating your forearm in an anticlockwise direction. Keep your palm now facing down, and bring your elbow close to your hip. This will lever the dagger out of the players hand, and also leave them wide open for your own counterstrike."

Read that carefully. The rotation is continuous. You do not block, then grab, then separately decide what to do next. The block flows into the grab flows into the rotation, and the rotation is what levers the dagger out of the opponent's hand.

This is Fiore's mechanical genius at work. A single motion that covers the incoming strike, seizes the weapon arm, and begins the disarm. Three actions, one tempo.

The Middle Bind (Ligadura Mezana)

Fiore then introduces his First Scholar of the First Master. The scholar takes the master's remedy and extends it into a specific finishing technique: the ligadura mezana, the middle bind.

After the hooking block, the scholar's forearm and upper arm form a 90-degree angle. His elbow sits close to his ribs (no further than a hand-span away), with the hand level with his shoulder. This is structurally the strongest position for the arm to be in. From here, the scholar pivots his hand in an anticlockwise circle around the elbow. The motion strips the weapon from the opponent's hand and wraps the opponent's arm into a bind the master can hold.

Simultaneously, the scholar steps forward: up with the back foot, then forward with the left, driving into the opponent. The step pushes the opponent off balance. As the bind takes effect, the opponent arches backward and tips off-balance to the scholar's left, leaving them completely exposed to a finishing strike.

The whole play (cover, grab, rotation, bind, step, finish) happens in a single smooth sequence. Pause anywhere in the middle and the opponent can counter. Move through it cleanly and the opponent has no chance to respond.

The Counter, and Why It Teaches You Something

Fiore also shows the counter to the First Scholar. If the scholar has overextended their elbow at the moment of maximum structural weakness, the player breaks the arm and throws the scholar to the ground.

This matters because it teaches a deeper lesson. Fiore's techniques work when the mechanics are clean. They fail when you over-commit, over-extend, or hold a position past its moment of usefulness. The counter to the First Scholar is essentially a reminder that even the master's own techniques can be reversed if you execute them poorly.

This is one of the quiet features of Fior di Battaglia that modern practitioners learn to love. Fiore does not pretend his art is invincible. He shows you what works, and then he shows you what breaks it, so you train to avoid both traps simultaneously.

Why the First Master Teaches So Much

"I cannot do better."

When Fiore writes that line about the First Master, he means it. The remedy this master teaches contains the core of Fiore's whole dagger logic.

  • The cover (hooking block) is a version of the same cover his other dagger masters use, differently angled for different attacks.
  • The grab is a version of the same grab that the Fifth Master uses against the collar hold, that later masters use against horizontal strikes, and so on.
  • The rotation into the disarm is the same rotational principle that appears across dagger, sword, and pollaxe.
  • The middle bind is one of the fundamental finishing techniques of Fiore's grappling, applied here with a dagger in hand.
  • The step-in to unbalance is the footwork you see in every Fiore play that resolves into zogho stretto.

Learn the First Master properly and you have internalised the grammar of Fiore's dagger work. The other masters become variations on a theme you already understand.

What This Looks Like in Drill

At HEMA Penzance we drill the First Master repeatedly, because each repetition teaches a slightly different lesson about the mechanics.

The first few times, you focus on the cover. Getting your forearm to the right angle, making the wrist-to-wrist contact clean, not punching your own hand onto the point of the opponent's dagger.

The next few times, you focus on the rotation into the grab. Smooth, continuous, with no pause between the cover and the hold.

Then the bind. The 90-degree elbow position, the anticlockwise circle, the step-in.

Then the whole sequence as one motion. Cover, grab, rotate, bind, step, finish.

Then the same sequence at increasing speeds until the opponent's attack is fast enough to feel real.

Then the counter (so you understand where the master's technique breaks and how to avoid breaking it yourself).

This one master, trained properly, can fill an evening's work and still leave more to learn next week. Fiore designed his dagger teaching that way. The first lesson is also the deepest lesson.

Doubt Yourself First

A final note worth sitting with. Fiore opens the entire dagger section with the warning we have quoted in our main dagger post: "Doubt yourself when against anyone with the dangerous knife. The arms, the hands and the elbows must immediately go against it."

The First Master's remedy is the physical enactment of that instruction. The arms, the hands, the elbows, going against the dagger immediately, doubting themselves in the sense of taking the threat absolutely seriously. The calm confidence of the master's text (I cannot do better) grows only out of the prior calibration: doubt yourself.

You do not skip to the confidence. You earn it by doing the calibration first.

Come and Train the Remedy

We practise Fiore's First Master and the rest of his dagger plays regularly at HEMA Penzance, every Tuesday evening at Penzance Leisure Centre, 7pm to 9pm. Your first lesson is free, all equipment is provided, and no experience is necessary. Come along and see for yourself.

Fiore's words and the detailed interpretation in this article are from the Getty manuscript translations and commentary at Fight Like Fiore.